News

May 11th, 2017

It’s British eccentricity at its best. Up there with the Loo of the Year Award and the Kebab Awards, the UK Good Funeral Awards return in 2017.

The quirky ceremony that recognises ‘outstanding service to the bereaved’ had its origins at an event celebrating the HBO TV series Six Feet Under in Bournemouth in 2011. It’s now back for the sixth year. The lunch for the great and the good of the UK funeral industry will be in the Porchester Hall in London on Thursday 7 September.

There are five new categories for this year’s funeral ‘Oscars’ reflecting the changes within the business. There is a new ‘What to do with the Ashes’ award to reflect the great number of options available now to family members to memorialise their loved ones cremains.

There is a ‘End-of-life Doula of the Year Award’. Doulas are well-known for providing support to women in childbirth, these individuals (sometimes called ‘soul midwives’) help to make the dying, and their families, feel safe and supported, as the person make the transition from this life to what’s next.

Out goes the ‘Embalmer of the Year’ award, replaced by a more general, ‘Care of the Deceased Award’. This is open to anyone in a back room role in the care for the body.

David Bowie and Anita Brookner went for a direct cremation in 2016. This is a new trend. It reflects a desire on the part of some people to cut out the funeral service altogether. We have a new category of ‘Best Direct Cremation Provider.’

We also have a category for the rising stars of the future: ‘Most Promising Trainee Funeral Director’.

There are twenty other awards, including the extremely popular, ‘Gravedigger of the Year’.

The winners are given an Anubis statue – the Egyptian god of embalming, presented in a miniature cardboard coffin. The judges select the winners based on nominations from members of the public and people working within the industry. They are designed to recognise the unsung heroes of the dismal trade.

The host this year will be author, Guy Browning.

‘The Good Funeral Awards have become the highlight of the year for the people in funeralworld, and nominations are already pouring in.

It is a privilege to read some of the stories that accompany nominations, tales of kindness, generosity and humanity that illustrate what a huge impact these people have had on bereaved families at the hardest time of their lives.

The funeral industry is rarely portrayed well by the media, but the Good Funeral Awards show just how much good goes on behind the closed doors of the undertaker’s parlour.’ said Fran Hall, CEO of the Good Funeral Guide.

The lunch draws people together people from all parts of the funeral industry. There will be an exhibition accompanying the event.

May 20th, 2016

If you have, we’d like to hear from you. Nominations are now open for the Good Funeral Awards 2016. This is the annual event where those unsung stars of the dismal trade get to shine for one day.

This year the awards will be sponsored by Funeralbooker.com. Funeralbooker is the modern, easy way to find a great funeral director.

‘We prize out those unusual characters, exceptional talents and long-serving heroes and give them recognition for their achievements.’ says organiser, Brian Jenner.

‘It’s not often that gravediggers, embalmers and funeral directors enjoy the limelight. The awards are small statues of Anubis – the Egyptian god of embalming – and they come in a small coffin-shaped box.’

In 2016 there are 24 categories – exactly the same number as they have at the Oscars in Hollywood.

The new categories include ‘Best Funeral Caterer’, ’Best Maker of Hand Carved Memorials’ and ‘Modern Funeral Director of the Year’.

The awards started in 2012. One of the most colourful categories has been the gravediggers of the year. Jonny Yaxley of Henley Wood Burial Ground became a minor celebrity after his win. Stuart Goodacre, who won in 2013 was featured on Radio 4’s Pick of the Week.

The awards lunch will be held in the Porchester Hall in London on Thursday 8 September.

July 29th, 2015

This year in Winchester we’ll be repeating our funeral cake competition, which was won by Natalie Buckingham of Buckinghams Cake Palace in Bournville last year.

As the Daily Mirror put it: Organisers are expecting a deluge of morbid meringues and the odd scone-but-not-forgotten.

We’re inviting visitors to the Ideal Death Show to bake a cake in memory of someone special. It will be on show during the exhibition and we’ll invite the best five to give us a short talk about what motivated them to create it.

We were originally inspired by Emma Freud’s advice in a Guardian article about putting together funerals. Everyone wants to be useful and helpful and they say things to the funeral organiser like: “Let me know if there’s anything I can do”

This can be frustrating for someone already overwhelmed with tasks.

Emma Freud’s stock answer is: “Could you please make a cake and bring it to the funeral tea?”

This means that “your funeral tea will be glorious, giving everyone lots of chances to say “Bernard would have adored the Battenberg”, and opportunities for quite a lot of Great British Bake Off-style banter. Also, you get left with enough cake to see you through the rest of that very difficult week.”

The scarab cake

This is the spirit of the competition and this year there will be a prize of a £100 meal for two for the best cake.

You may use non-edibles i.e. support structures, polystyrene dummies, wires, etc. The cake can be in any style, but we suggest that there should be a story associated with it about someone who has died. We’d like the cakes to be meaningful in some way.

May 29th, 2015

Edward Reichman was a property developer and the brains behind Canary Wharf.

He was also billionaire, who had lawyers at his beck and call.

When he passed away, a lawyer showed up with word that the deceased had left two wills.

The first will was to be read immediately as it contained information pertaining to the funeral and the second will was to be read thirty days after the passing .

Quicky scanning the first will, the children were suprised to see the only request was for their father to be buried in his favorite pair of white socks.

Despite threats of lawsuits, much screaming and tears, the Jewish burial society refused to bury the late billionaire in anything other than the burial shrouds mandated by Jewish law.

Said the Chevra Kadisha: ‘While the socks may have been important to your father while he was alive, he certainly knows better now that he is in the world of truth.’

Thirty days later, the family gathered to hear their father’s final words to them.

‘By now,’ read the lawyer relaying the message from the grave, ‘I am buried according to Jewish law. I lived my life according to the way I believe G-d wanted me to live. Neither my billions of dollars worth of real estate, stocks, bonds or apartment in Israel were able to get me buried in those white socks.’

‘Don’t worry, dear children. I don’t need the socks where I am now. Because, with all of my billions, I knew that when my turn came to die, I couldn’t even take with me a pair of socks.’

‘All we have to take with us is what we give away. What we give to our children, our grandchildren, whatever we give to others is what we will be allowed to keep for eternity.’

May 15th, 2015

The Oscars of the funeral industry will be awarded by Ian Lavender (Private Pike from Dad’s Army) on Saturday 5 September at a glittering ceremony in the University of Winchester.

The ceremony will be part of the second Ideal Death Show from 4-6 September, an exhibition of merchandise from innovators within the funeral industry, which will take place in St John’s House on the Broadway.

The public is invited to send in their nominations for most promising new funeral director, best alternative hearse and funeral celebrant of the year.

The awards recognise outstanding service to the bereaved. There are 16 categories including a new category of Mortuary Technician (APT) of the Year.

There will also be death cafés – opportunities to discuss the grim reaper over tea and cake.

The event will be hosted by leading consumer advocacy groups, the Good Funeral Guide and the Winchester-based Natural Death Centre.

Tickets for the exhibition are free, but members of the public need to register.

Charles Cowling, author of the Good Funeral Guide, said ‘They’re not weird, these great funeral people, they’re wonderful. Above all they’re amazingly normal, just like us. Kind. Decent. Friends in need. The world needs to know this. And they richly deserve to have their praises sung and their stories told. This event is where we get to do that.’

January 19th, 2015

Montaigne said that everyone should spend at least 15 minutes a day thinking about death. I remember thinking when I read that, ‘How sensible!’

It was a bit overdone – I don’t say to myself, ‘Right, now I shall think about death for 15 minutes.’ But I think one should be aware of it very early on, and think about it, so that it isn’t frightening.

I had a terribly sad time last week meeting a very old friend, who is awfully ill and who is terribly frightened of death. I asked him why and tried to get him unfrightened. My father, if you talked about death, got up and left the room. He couldn’t bear it. But to me, it’s always seemed part of life.

Nobody likes the thought of dying – which could be very disagreeable indeed. But it doesn’t have to be. My mother’s great gift to me was that she died easily. So I realised being with her then that it wasn’t necessarily horrible. I hope that I’m going to have the same luck.

My friend said to me, ‘What’s going to happen afterwards.’ I said, ‘Darling, nothing’s going to happen. It’ll be like going to sleep.’

I think he’d had a rather religious upbringing and thought he was going to burn in hell.

December 12th, 2014

It’s a publishing sensation. Doctor Atul Gawande has written a book about how our children move away, our powers diminish, we become sick, our friends die, we become isolated, with limited scope for purposeful activity, and then we’re poked by doctors and filled with drugs in the belief that maybe we might never have to to let go of our mortal coil. And it’s selling well!

Gawande’s mixture of biography, storytelling and comment journalism reveals the mind of the C21st ‘elite’ doctor. He can work miracles with material medicine, but the harder he tries, the more he begins to question whether his miracles are actually helping us do what we’re here to do: live.

We can keep cancer patients alive, but the suffering and indignities they have to endure are sometimes repulsive.

We have superb assisted care facilities for the very old, but the fact that they’re safe and comfortable, makes living in them tedious and depressing.

Doctor have knowledge and expertise to deal with disease, but they can’t initiate honest conversations with patients about the thing that really matters – treatment can’t go on forever, and sometimes it’s better to do without and face the inevitable.

Atul Gawande has humility and tells many sad stories about how solutions to problems devised by doctors have created institutions like old people’s homes that don’t necessarily provide us with what we need. Old religious societies often provided better solutions.

He writes very well, and this book was so easy to read I finished it in a few days.

We need to think harder about how we look after people at the end of their lives and Gawande offers some preliminary thoughts on where that discussion should lead.

September 15th, 2014

The scarab cake

The World War 2 Cake

Natalie Buckingham

Congratulations to Natalie Buckingham from Buckinghams Cake Palace who won the first ever Ideal Death Show ‘funeral cake competition’. She won dinner for two at Jamie’s Italian Restaurant in Birmingham.

The runner-up was Terry Boyle, Managing Director of Commemoration Cakes. Terry won a £20 Amazon token.

The competition stimulated creativity, imagination and some heart-rending stories.

July 25th, 2014

Earlier this year Emma Freud wrote an article in the Guardian about how to organise a funeral.

She said:

If you remember nothing else about this article, I’d love you to remember this: at a funeral, everyone would like to feel useful or helpful.

Hence the deafening chorus of: “Let me know if there’s anything I can do”, which always makes me want to say, quite loudly: “STOP ASKING ME, JUST THINK OF SOMETHING AND THEN DO IT OR AT LEAST BUY ME A PRESENT.”

But there is a constructive answer: “Could you please make a cake and bring it to the funeral tea?”

This is a win-win-win – the person you’ve asked to bake at last feels useful. They arrive at the funeral feeling like someone who is contributing, rather than someone useless who is trying not to cry. And your funeral tea will be glorious, giving everyone lots of chances to say “Bernard would have adored the battenberg”, and opportunities for quite a lot of Great British Bake Off-style banter.

This has inspired to organisers of the Ideal Death Show to put on a Great British Bake Off-style funeral/mourning cake competition.

We’re challenging the UK’s morbid-minded cake-makers to use their imagination to bake a cake to impress the visitors to the first Ideal Death Show.

All you have to do is tell us you’d like to take part – click here to get in touch, design a cake, and bring it along to The Beeches Hotel in Bournville on Saturday 6 September to exhibit to visitors to the show.

There is a £6 charge to enter. The winner will get a meal for two in one of Birmingham’s smartest restaurants.

“We know a competition like this was pioneered by Respect Green Burials at an event in Brigg in Lincolnshire as part of Dying Matters Awareness Week. It’s a great way to respond creatively to feelings of grief and sadness.” said organiser Brian Jenner.

“It’s also about restarting a tradition. In Yorkshire, funeral Cakes tied with black crêpe were delivered to homes in the village as invitations to the funeral. Another Northern tradition is to bake a cake or biscuit specially to be eaten at funerals. The biscuits were traditionally decorated with a heart symbol to represent the soul of the deceased.”

You may use non-edibles i.e. support structures, polystyrene dummies, wires, etc. The cake can be in any style, but we suggest that there should be a story associated with it about someone who has died. We’d like the cakes to be meaningful in some way.